[lrt's friend]

Then why is it called an LRT? this is another thing i found frustrating. That line is a streetcar service plain and simple. That's what it looked like 10 yrs ago and that what it is now. Look at other projects out there such as the Hazel McCallion line in Mississauga or the Ottawa projects or Montreal? Are they putting this many stops? they are not. the Hazel McCallion line is 19 stops for 18 kms. that's what you need, about one stop per Km approx . I dont see anywhere outside of Toronto this BS of torturing user with a gazillions stops on LRT or RT routes.

What is happening in Ottawa and Montreal is completely different. Those are designed to be rapid transit, not local transit. They are totally segregated rights of way. What is happening on Finch is more a streetcar, but LRT does not necessarily mean 'rapid'. Nevertheless, I am sure the line can be optimized. It seems to be a matter of political will. The exact same model of train is used in Ottawa, and there has been an enormous amount of complaints about speed and reliability there. Station wait times have been a big complaint. Is that a problem on Finch as well?

 

[nfitz]

Then why is it called an LRT? this is another thing i found frustrating. That line is a streetcar service plain and simple. That's what it looked like 10 yrs ago and that what it is now. Look at other projects out there such as the Hazel McCallion line in Mississauga or the Ottawa projects or Montreal?

The Ottawa and Montreal projects are grade-separated subway-like projects. Heck, the Montreal project is mostly a converted commuter rail line. Would you compare the planed GO-ALRT to a line like Finch?

I'm not sure why you need so many consecutive posts to say the same thing.

But i was a bit wrong here, It turns out that a jogger could EXCEED THIS PACE.

The jogger only did 46-minutes. We've seen reports of LRV runs that were faster than that - even without signal priority being enabled. I very much doubt this will sustainable in the long-term.

 

[christine]

Rob Ford wanted a subway. So did Georgio Mammoliti. They realized the due to the way Toronto is - there would be no way that the LRT would actually be Rapid. Unfortunately, they were not smart enough to propose something else.

I'd like to set the record straight on this.

The intention was to pillage the Finch West LRT funds for his Sheppard Subway extension. In no way was a future Finch West subway going to happen even if they got the votes. In fact Rob Ford only added the BRT-Lite proposal (that came before the Finch vote) because of the high ridership numbers on Finch. His original draft/plan was going to neglect Finch outright. Changing to BRT-Lite still freed up some money to throw in his Sheppard plan while retaining his anti-surface rail policy. And his anti-surface rail policy came from his belief that LRT vehciles were going to be interfering with traffic on Finch just like on Queen - it had nothing to do about transit speed or operations.

 

[TwoWheelPoli]

I went out earlier this week to ride the LRT again. Though the eastbound trip took 49 minutes, the westbound trip took 15 minutes linger than that - 1 hour, 4 minutes.

It isn't just the slow speeds, it's the inconsistency that's awful.

Still waiting for the Finch West LRT

There’s not one easy fix for the Finch West LRT. Not only does it need transit signal priority, but it needs tighter schedules and better operations to live up to early promises.

seanmarshall.ca

Sounds like things will be inconsistent for quite a while given my ride from Keele to Humber College took 41 minutes. Hope full TSP gets activated sooner rather than later.

 

[Burnt creek]

The jogger only did 46-minutes. We've seen reports of LRV runs that were faster than that - even without signal priority being enabled. I very much doubt this will sustainable in the long-term.

Phew. Thanks for setting the record straight. The commuters who have to use that line from Humber college can now be re-assured that jogger might not be able to outpace the Finch West LRT afterall.

 

[Bordercollie]

Phew. Thanks for setting the record straight. The commuters who have to use that line from Humber college can now be re-assured that jogger might not be able to outpace the Finch West LRT afterall.

Use the LRT cars for another line and use the ROW for buses and use it as a BRT lol

 

[nfitz]

Phew. Thanks for setting the record straight. The commuters who have to use that line from Humber college can now be re-assured that jogger might not be able to outpace the Finch West LRT afterall.

Says the guy who wonders why a line using LRVs is called an LRT.

 

[Westey]

I'd like to set the record straight on this.

The intention was to pillage the Finch West LRT funds for his Sheppard Subway extension. In no way was a future Finch West subway going to happen even if they got the votes. In fact Rob Ford only added the BRT-Lite proposal (that came before the Finch vote) because of the high ridership numbers on Finch. His original draft/plan was going to neglect Finch outright. Changing to BRT-Lite still freed up some money to throw in his Sheppard plan while retaining his anti-surface rail policy. And his anti-surface rail policy came from his belief that LRT vehciles were going to be interfering with traffic on Finch just like on Queen - it had nothing to do about transit speed or operations.

Rob Ford didn't want LRT interfering with traffic.
Transit enthusiast from a decade ago thought it was more important to have LRT interfere with traffic than for LRT run free from interference from traffic.
If someone would have said - hey Rob, how about building elevated for same price as on-street, he may have supported it.
No doubt, Ford didn't know what to do but he knew what was planned - what we have now - was not going to work and may as well punt the ball by a decade or two until something better is proposed.
(I suspect in Fords mind he thought subway may be warranted, by demand and not just politically, by that time).
I think Ford had the best proposal for Finch of anyone (if we call the talk of subway just rhetoric).

 

[Burnt creek]

Says the guy who wonders why a line using LRVs is called an LRT.

Sorry, I am not sure what you are getting at. I am not sure what I said about LRV, you might be thinking of another post by someone else. Maybe we clarify this at the next TFC game in march

 

[christine]

No doubt, Ford didn't know what to do but he knew what was planned - what we have now - was not going to work and may as well punt the ball by a decade or two until something better is proposed.
(I suspect in Fords mind he thought subway may be warranted, by demand and not just politically, by that time).
I think Ford had the best proposal for Finch of anyone (if we call the talk of subway just rhetoric).

You are mistaken and are giving him more credit than he deserves. Rob Ford didn't care about ridership numbers when he came up with the subway idea. Remember, he originally had nothing planned for Finch, then BRT-Lite and then all of a sudden a full subway line in a span of months. That kind of decision making is not evidence-based. His plans ignored studies from city staff, experts, the province and consultants.

Even if all the stars were aligned back then and an unsubstantiated decision was made to go ahead with a Finch Subway, you're overbuilding at the expense of other areas of the city that desperately need transit improvements. There is no infinite money glitch for transit plans.

 

[drum118]

Dec 7
Finally got around doing the videos for opening day

 

[ThenWhat]

Then why is it called an LRT? […]

Because "LRT" sounds so cool and modern. "Streetcar" is such an old fashioned and 20th century word. Who is going to invest in building a streetcar line?

And by the way the "R" in LRT stands for "rail", not for " rapid", in common usage. This in spite of what you find in various promotional materials.

 

[urbanclient]

Line 6 is not only slower than the 36 bus, it is also slower than the 41 + 996 TTC bus. It has also been calculated to be slower than taking Line 1 to Highway 407 station and taking the new 40M GO bus starting January 3, 2026. The upper range of the trip times on Line 6 (10.3 km) are exceeding Line 1 Vaughan to Finch (38.4 km) times, which is ridiculous.

We raced TTC's Line 6 on a bus and it was so slow we had time to stop for a snack

Toronto's newest transit line debuted on Dec. 7 to brutally bad reviews, and it seems that even a few weeks into service, the TTC has not ironed out …

www.blogto.com

To whom it may concern: only in North America are these called LRVs and LRT. In Europe this would be considered a street-running tram, which is directly analogous to a Toronto streetcar. Fighting over semantics just shows you've never set foot outside the continent. Line 6 is in every way a streetcar. LRTs even in the United States often have stronger grade-separation for most, if not all of its routing. Conversely, LRTs in Asia are virtually all light metros. See Kelana Jaya line in Malaysia and my metro vs. tram post below: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelana_Jaya_line

I'd like to set the record straight on this.

The intention was to pillage the Finch West LRT funds for his Sheppard Subway extension. In no way was a future Finch West subway going to happen even if they got the votes. In fact Rob Ford only added the BRT-Lite proposal (that came before the Finch vote) because of the high ridership numbers on Finch. His original draft/plan was going to neglect Finch outright. Changing to BRT-Lite still freed up some money to throw in his Sheppard plan while retaining his anti-surface rail policy. And his anti-surface rail policy came from his belief that LRT vehciles were going to be interfering with traffic on Finch just like on Queen - it had nothing to do about transit speed or operations.

And pillaging funds for the Sheppard Subway extension would have been the right thing to do. I will die on this hill that Finch West did not deserve an LRT before transit improvements were made along other denser, more deserving corridors. A competent transit plan would have prioritized the many over the few. And while trying to help the few over the many, Line 6 ends up doing neither.

 

[A 6264]

And by the way the "R" in LRT stands for "rail", not for " rapid", in common usage.

Just took a look at what Wikipedia has to say about this. You're right, they have a page titled Light Rail, which says it's the same thing as LRT. Their pages for Toronto lines 5 and 6 identify them as light rail.
However, their article on line 3 Scarborough RT identifies it as "light rapid transit" in the infobox, and the phrase links to a page titled Medium-capacity rail system, which "typically resembles a rapid transit system", but doesn't have the word rapid in the label. Hmmm..... Further down the article it does say RT in the name, stands for Rapid Transit.
As for the Ontario line, they call it rapid transit (with 4 citations!) and avoid the LRT abbreviation. The page for Rapid Transit says the term includes MRT mass rapid transit, and RRT rail rapid transit.
Yes, I know Wikipedia is not an authority. But I'm willing to bet their choice of terms has been challenged in the past, and a concensus was reached, undoubtably with input from people on this forum. (But not me!)
But that may not be applicable to the Ontario Line, which could change status when it's actually built.

 

[urbanclient]

Just took a look at what Wikipedia has to say about this. You're right, they have a page titled Light Rail, which says it's the same thing as LRT. Their pages for Toronto lines 5 and 6 identify them as light rail.
However, their article on line 3 Scarborough RT identifies it as "light rapid transit" in the infobox, and the phrase links to a page titled Medium-capacity rail system, which "typically resembles a rapid transit system", but doesn't have the word rapid in the label. Hmmm..... Further down the article it does say RT in the name, stands for Rapid Transit.
As for the Ontario line, they call it rapid transit (with 4 citations!) and avoid the LRT abbreviation. The page for Rapid Transit says the term includes MRT mass rapid transit, and RRT rail rapid transit.
Yes, I know Wikipedia is not an authority. But I'm willing to bet their choice of terms has been challenged in the past, and a concensus was reached, undoubtably with input from people on this forum. (But not me!)
But that may not be applicable to the Ontario Line, which could change status when it's actually built.

This is already a polite way to put it: "Fighting over semantics just shows you've never set foot outside the continent." In essence: this debate is pointless and indicates ignorance of not just foreign terminology, but what a metro/subway even is. If people here actually put in the time to look into what these transit mode terms actually mean beyond just skimming, there wouldn't be these pointless "uMmM aCkTuaLY Line 6 uses LRVs so it must be an LRT" debates.

The Ontario Line will run with 3 metre wide, high floor trains. That alone makes it a full metro, rather than light metro or the North American tram "LRT". Only rolling stock with widths below 2.8 metres could be called light metro, and even then Montreal and Paris are notable exceptions. The Calgary and Edmonton systems that run on dedicated ROWs for portions would be analogous to Paris' tram-trains. Line 6 and the streetcars would be called trams in Europe (and the rest of the world).

"LRT" outside of Asia, is just a made-up North American term because apparently we didn't want to use the word "tram". LRTs just means light metro in Asia because "light rail" is the best translation of "light metro" in many Asian languages. Metro is short for metropolitan railway, and nobody literally calls it a "metropolitan" railway in Asia.

There are just two modes of local rail transit nowadays: metros and trams, everything else can be considered a variation of those two. And virtually noone is thinking of the distinction between metro and light metro besides forum dwellers. The older Beijing airport line technically uses light metro Innovia ART 200 rolling stock, but nobody goes around calling it "light" anything. It's just an express metro line that happens to serve the airport. For people in Copenhagen, their light metro system is just the "metro". If it ain't a metro, it's a tram. A stadtbahn is just an upgraded tram line, if upgraded at all. An LRT is just a tram line.